A Future Arrived (46 page)

The radio crackled in Derek's ears. Squadron Leader Powell's voice. “This is Fox leader. Angels two zero. Bandits. Don't break till I do. Echelon starboard. That's the good lads.”

Derek glanced down and ahead. The German bombers were two thousand feet below and five miles ahead—a great black swarm of them in tight formations. Fifty at least. High above them were the Messerschmitts, whirling like bees as the fifteen Spitfires made their first slashing pass through them. That was the strategy. Spits to hit the fighters … Hurricanes to break up the bomber formations. They had flown a long way from Kentish Hill and had a long flight back. Derek checked the fuel gauge. Ten, fifteen minutes. That was the time they could safely stay over Belgium.

“Tally Ho!” Powell yelled over the R.T. “Buster!”

Wing over and down in a sickening plummet toward the packed masses of the bombers below. Dorniers. Pencil-thin bodies and short stubby wings. Derek flicked on the gunsight and turned the firing button from safety. Tracer whirling up from the German top gunners. Twitchy, he was thinking. Wasting ammunition. The green-and-black bombers grew larger with frightening rapidity. He picked one out, staring at the gunsight glow reflected on the windshield … the huge body … the black crosses filling the sharply etched lines. He pressed the firing button and the Hurricane shuddered with the recoil of the eight guns. Tracers thudding home, bits of the German's portside engine whipped away. Don't tarry … don't tarry … on and through … pick another. He was being hit … tracer coursing past the cowling. The sound of snapping metal behind him. A Dornier turning to his right. He fired ahead of it, holding down the button. Perfect deflection shot … the bomber flying straight into the bullet stream … the plastic greenhouse of the nose exploding into a million fragments. A clean kill. “Got one, Skipper!” he screamed over the radio. And then he was past them all in a wind-shrieking dive toward the green land below. Back on the stick, fighting the pressure on the wings. Out of it … the blood draining from his head … chin pulled down to his chest. He blacked out for a second and when his head cleared he was climbing back up. Ten thousand feet … fifteen … twenty. No sign of the bombers or his squadron. Voices over the R.T. “Got the bastard!” “Look out, Johnnie!” “I'm behind you, Skipper.” “Break left … break left!”

And then he saw them. Ten miles ahead. The once tight bomber formation spread out now over miles of sky. A bomber dropping in a ball of fire. Another with one wing gone, twirling down like a leaf from a tree. The vicious little Messerschmitts and the Spitfires churning in and out among the bombers. A Spitfire went into a dive and never pulled out of it. One of the Hurricanes rolled lazily past, flames roaring out of the cockpit, through the black form of the pilot now mercifully dead. Squadron Leader Powell's plane. Then Barratt's voice through the cacophony of the radio.

“I've been hit! I've been hit!”

He looked wildly around but could not see him. Many of the bombers were jettisoning their loads now and breaking out of the fight. Time to go for all of them.

“This is Fox Green leader … Skipper bought it … break for home. Buster!”

He power dived for the coast and pulled out low over the sand dunes. A glance in the rearview mirror. Other Hurricanes behind him. He dropped lower, keeping twenty feet above the flat sea, and set a course for the Kentish coast.

J
OLLY
R
ODGERS SAT
unmoving in his neat little station commander's office. The window was open and he stared unseeing at the bright grass of the airfield, the distant woods.

“We were always such a tight little group,” he said in a dull, faraway voice. “Pals, Ramsay. All good pals together. Powelly and me … ten years. In the squadron every weekend … in the City during the week. I'm a solicitor, you know. Weeks, Parsons, Rodgers, and Bolton … Gough Square. I can't tell you how many cases old Powelly pleaded in court for me. Bloody fine lawyer. Finer man. Three kids. Not fair, Ramsay. Powell gone … and Shepherd. Young Barratt. Wilson saw him go. Plane looked okay. Must have been killed in his seat.” He wiped a hand slowly across his forehead. He looked suddenly very old and tired. “They'll be sending a new skipper tomorrow and replacements. You're a level-headed chap. Natural flier. Two planes to your credit now. Damn good show.” He sighed deeply and continued to stare through the window as though hoping to see Squadron Leader Jeremy Thomas Powell come skimming in over the trees in time for lunch. “If ops scrambles the squadron this afternoon, which they probably will, you'd best take command of it.”

“Thanks. And I'm sorry, Jolly.”

“Of course, old man … of course.”

Derek walked toward the mess, still wearing his cumbersome Irvin suit and flying boots. The squadron leader of the Spitfire squadron came up to him on a bicycle and stopped. He was a tall, rangy-looking man with thick eyebrows. A regular. “Ramsay. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sorry we had such a brief meet-to this morning. Shame about your skipper. You chaps did bloody okay this morning. Lost three, did you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We lost two of ours. But bloody pranged them proper, eh?”

“Not bad.”

“Break the bastards up. That's the ticket, Ramsay. Give ‘em a squirt and look for another. Rattle the bastards. Well, see you in the mess. Buy you a beer.”

Derek watched him cycle furiously off. He paused for a moment and looked out across the field. The ground crew were working on the planes, fuel trucks—so damn few of them—moving from one to another. Fitters, mechanics, and armorers swarming over their particular plane. Getting them ready. Probably fly out in an hour or so. Back across. Today … and tomorrow. And all the tomorrows to come.

T
HE FEW
M
ATILDAS
that were left were run into the ditches so that only the turret and the two-pounder gun could be seen above the ground. The light tanks were parked in strategic spots among the rubble at the edge of the town to serve as machine-gun support for the infantry. Their engines were drained of oil and allowed to run until they smoked and died. There was no fuel left in the dumps to move them very far anyway.

“It's dig in and pray,” Fenton said, pulling the cork on a bottle of wine. He walked around the shell-holed post office that served as his command post and splashed wine into the tin mugs of his junior officers. It was an hour past sundown, but the room was bright from the burning buildings across the street. No one was fighting the flames. There was no water and less time. “I want the buggers to pay for every foot of ground. Make that clearly understood, Tomlinson. No indiscriminate firing. Make every bloody shot count.”

“Yes, sir,” the captain said. He was a young man, his eyes sunken in a drawn face. He looked ancient.

“Forlorn hope,” the general muttered, pacing the room with its counter and clerks' cage, the postal regulations set in a framed box on one wall, the glass long shattered. “I was a boy during the Boer War. One heard a good deal of that expression then … ‘forlorn hope' … the gallant charge of doomed men. Boer words actually …
verloren hoop
… lost troop. That's us, lads, in case no one is aware of it.”

There was some strained laughter and the men drank their wine and left.

“Not the most encouraging little speech I've ever heard,” Albert said. He was seated on the countertop, legs dangling, nursing his cup of wine.

“I'd be a proper shit if I told them any different. They're good lads and appreciate the truth—even if it is a trifle nasty.”

“‘Trifle'? You sounded like a Spartan general at Thermopylae.”

Fenton snorted and downed his wine in a gulp. “The old Spartans prettied themselves up before battle. Did you know that? Plucked their body hair and painted their lips and eyes. Can you see my lot doing that? Take an order from the king to make them clean their fingernails. My boys won't die gloriously, they'll just die—scruffy and tough to the bloody end. You'll see.” He frowned and opened another bottle with the corkscrew in his pocketknife. “To be frank, I hope you don't see. I'm ordering you off. Go back to Blightly and do your writing there.”

“You can't order me to do anything. All you can do is kick me out of your area.”

“Which is the blasted trouble with civilians. Never do what they're told.”

There was a stir outside and a sergeant stuck his head through the jagged gap where a door had once been. “General White arriving, sir.”

The elderly corps commander came into the room, stepping carefully over the rubble.

“Hello, Chalky,” Fenton said. “Care for some plonk? A Cotes du Rhone. Modest, but pleasant.”

“I don't think so, Hawk. Thanks just the same.” He sat wearily on a bench, removed his cap, and slapped the dust from it. His kindly face was ingrained with soot and his mustache gray with ash. “Orders came in for you, Hawk. Direct from Downing Street. The French will take over your positions tonight. You're to pull your people down to the beach.”

“Bugger that.”

“An order is an order. If it were up to me I'd gladly sell you to Jerry for thirty pieces of silver—less, even. You can be such a pain in the arse.”

“Now look here, Chalky—”

“No arguments please. I've been a firm supporter of your theories for over ten years. The tank is the key to victory. Everyone knows that now. Winston doesn't want his few experts dead or lolling away in prison camps. Don't be a fool, Hawk. Get your mob to the beach as quickly as possible. There'll be three destroyers coming in before midnight and you'd damn well better get on one of them.”

Fenton poured wine into his cup and handed it to the general. “I would appreciate your judgment, Chalky.”

The man took a sip. “Good body. Soft on the palate. You might leave some bottles behind. The French will appreciate it.”

They moved through the shattered, burning town and down to the beach. Night brought little relief from the bombing. Parachute flares drifted eerily above the harbor, bringing into sharp relief the wooden girders of the long pier. Stukas dived through the sulfurous mist of the flares, aiming for the pier and the long lines of shuffling men, but their bombs fell wide.

“A bloody charmed life that pier,” one of the naval embarkation officers said.

Fenton eyed the rickety structure dubiously. “And we're to go out on that?”

“Afraid so. No other spot for the destroyers to dock.
Javelin, Verity
, and
Venomous
are due within the hour … or as soon as the hospital ship finishes loading on. You can stay here if you wish. I have your group down for
Venomous
. Four hundred and twelve. Is that correct?”

“More like three ninety—and one civilian.”

“A civilian? Oh, I say. I wasn't told. Not Belgian royalty or anything like that I suppose?”

“Hardly. A newspaper reporter. Albert Thaxton of the
Post
.”

“Oh, dear. Probably be charged for the passage I expect. Be all right with him, do you think?”

Fenton merely stared at him until he hurried away into the flickering darkness.

“War,” he said to Albert, “is truly the province of madness.”

D
AWN WAS BREAKING
across a cloudless sky when the army staff car pulled up in front of the Café Moskva.

“Care to come up?” Albert asked.

Fenton shook his head. “Just give her my love. We'll have dinner together if at all possible.”

Dinner together! It seemed unreal to Albert. He stood on the pavement in the cool quiet of the London street, the howls and shrieks of Dunkirk still buzzing in his ears. Unlocking the front door, he carried his gear up the stairs and left it in the hall. The bedroom door was open and he could see Jennifer's blanketed form. He sat on the edge of the bed and placed a hand softly on her shoulder.

She awoke with a jump and a startled cry.

“It's only me,” he said.

“Oh, my God!” she sobbed, throwing herself into his arms. “
Only
you! Oh, Thax … Thax … Thax!”

“I'm as filthy as a tramp.”

She buried her face in his shoulder and clenched his back. “I don't care. I don't care …”

“I do. I'm a fastidious man. Would you draw me a bath? I'm too tired to move another step.”

She bounded off the bed, putting on lights, turning on the taps in the bath, boiling water for tea. He continued to sit on the bed, talking to her to keep awake and watching her darting back and forth in her nightgown. She helped him undress, clucking her tongue over the appalling condition of his clothes. “I think we'll have to burn this lot.” She helped him into the tub and knelt by the side of it to scrub his back vigorously with a sponge.

“I think I must have died and gone to paradise,” he said, sinking down under the foam.

“And then bed for you … sleep for a week.”

“A few hours is more like it. I have to see Jacob.”